Things got a bit testy on Tuesday night during the monthly meeting of the Board of Education for the Public Schools of Robeson County when Douglas McBroom, appearing before the board for the ninth time this year, did as he promised and used his three minutes to chastise members and call for their collective resignation.

But he also, to use a phrase from journalism, might have buried the lede.

McBroom has focused mostly on what he alleges is a failure of at least six members of the board to follow state law and get ethics training after their election to the board or re-election, which they are provided a year to accomplish. He named six — board Chairman John Campbell, who was not at the meeting Tuesday; Brian Freeman, also absent; Dwayne Smith; Brenda Fairley-Ferebee; Mike Smith and Steve Martin — as being guilty.

Mike Smith and Fairley-Ferebee chimed in on Tuesday, saying they have in fact taken the ethics training. Schools Superintendent Shanita Wooten also stood in defense of board members, saying information that McBroom had was not accurate.

This newspaper will attempt to learn the truth, which is black or white. It shouldn’t be a far reach, but we will see. Although school leaders, including Campbell, have said two floods have destroyed some records, the information surely can be obtained elsewhere in this age of digitization.

Remember, these board members volunteered for office, and they are paid, not as well as our commissioners, but well enough. Additionally, when they attend such training sessions, they are reimbursed for expenses.

It does appear that some are already engaged in what we could call a crash course on ethics.

What should also be black and white, but will probably be more gray, is McBroom’s second assertion, and that is the board acted illegally the entire time that Loistine DeFreece was living outside of District 1 but carrying on board duties anyway. DeFreece, you probably know, resigned in early October when it became publicly known that she had moved outside of her district following Hurricane Matthew, and was in violation of the board’s own policy that a member who represents a district must in fact live in that district.

McBroom points out, convincingly we believe, that fellow board members were aware of DeFreece’s living arrangements and their silence amounted to their being complicit.

McBroom argues that any votes that DeFreece participated in during what amounts to as many as three years were done illegally. He points out as well that since many of the votes are 6-5 on a divided board, hers could have been the decisive one more than once and on key matters, even the hiring of the superintendent.

So there is a lot to sort out, and it’s incumbent upon the board to do so quickly and in a transparent fashion. The school system pays handsome money for an attorney, and he has some work to do.

We know school board members didn’t like McBroom’s questions, but that doesn’t mean they are undeserving of an answer. We aren’t too hung up on the lack of ethics training, believing that can be easily fixed.

But if it is determined that votes have been illegally cast, that is a much larger problem to fix.

Absent a time-travel machine, we aren’t sure it can be done in a meaningful way.